18 century poet detained for debt.- Smart (Christopher, poet, 1722-71) Autograph Letter signed to Sir John Hussey Delaval, 1p. with conjugate blank and address panel, sm. 4to, [London] King's Bench [Prison], 26th April 1770, imprisoned for debt and appealing for help, "After being detained at a sponging house a fortnight, I was committed to the Marshalsea for a week & am now at the place from whence I date this upon a false demand by one Bright a barber at Spring-Garden, Charing Cross - I have had so many obligations to you, that I was asham'd to send to you even in my extreme distress, which in the Marshalsea was not of hunger - If I can get a few friends to procure me the Rules [freedom to walk in St George's Fields], I shall be somewhat more able to live a little longer", small tear without loss of text, piece torn away where opened on blank, folds, slightly browned.

⁂ Smart was a habitual spendthrift and spent much of his life chronically in debt and his plight was exacerbated by the onset of mental illness. He was imprisoned at King's Bench until his trial on 11 February 1771, where he was found guilty of a default of payment to a creditor. In the 20 century much of his work has been reappraised, especially Jubilate agno (rediscovered in 1939 and set by Benjamin Britten's cantata Rejoice in the Lamb). "Jubilate agno itself now rivals A Song to David as a work of intrinsic and historical importance which anticipated by half a century the oracular poetry of the Romantics, and directly influenced many twentieth-century poets in England and North America." - Oxford DNB.

Sir John Hussey Delaval, first Baron Delaval (1728-1808); English landowner and politician.